Solarization
by Midnight Caller
Summary: Sara finds Grissom on a rooftop. They converse.


"Solarization" By Midnight Caller  
  
Disclaimer: Last night Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't write this Grissom & Sara fic, he'd melt my brain. Well, I wrote it. And he still melted my brain.  
  
Virtual support rocks. You know who you are.  
  
Dev - 'thank you' seems grossly inadequate, but I don't know how else to say it. Thank you.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Summary: Sara finds Grissom on the CSI rooftop and they converse. Big old convo piece.  
  
Archive: Just tell me where.  
  
******  
  
Sara found him on the roof, straddling a creaky wooden chair and staring out into the yellow fire spread out across the sky. She surprised him only slightly when she sat down next to him, straddled a chair, and rested her chin on the back support.  
  
"Your secret hiding place. hope you don't mind." she said with a heavy sigh, easing herself into a comfortable position on the shaky chair.  
  
Grissom shrugged and continued to stare toward the horizon. She knew he wasn't being rude. It was just the way he was. But today . he had been quiet even for him. Too quiet. Something was festering in his mind; she could sense it in his distance, and she'd seen it too many times today when she looked in his eyes.  
  
"I just come up here to think," he explained, almost whispering. "It's quiet."  
  
"What were you thinking about?"  
  
He cocked his head. "Less thinking . more . remembering ."  
  
She nodded slowly, and followed his gaze out toward the sunset. The small silhouette of a plane crossed across the golden vista of sky before banking into a turn that took it behind a cloud. She hoped Grissom would keep talking, but he kept his attention focused on the ever-changing atmospheric palette.  
  
"Why is it that whenever we try to remember things we always end up missing them?" She saw in his eyes that her words had struck him to the core. He eventually swallowed and looked away. She bit her lip before deciding to continue.  
  
"I remember. that we never got sunsets like this on the coast," she remarked, and saw his head nod slightly in agreement. "Boston had some incredible ones, with the sun trying to peek out from behind all those incoming weather fronts. And not that I minded San Francisco's sky show, but all that off-shore pollution blown up by L.A. produced these strange colors that just weren't quite real." She gestured toward the fiery sky aglow with a deep orange-yellow hue. "This. this is just one of those things you only see in a place where the sun is this intense."  
  
She paused, inhaling deeply through her nose. It was dry. Stale. The stench of nothing.  
  
"You know what I miss most about Boston?" He met her gaze, briefly, his eyes asking her to continue. "The smell of winter. The scent of the air right before it snows. I know that's a weird thing to say - most people would welcome warm weather - but I just loved the way the air got so crisp it hurt to breathe. It seemed the colder it got there, the more at home I felt. It forced us all together. The Chem club would have snowball fights with the Physics club. We'd have study sessions in whoever's room had the best heat. It was like having this . wonderfully large family." She stopped, realizing the embarrassing smile that had come over her face. After a moment it faded. "I like knowing I haven't forgotten that part of my life. The piece of mind that comes from just . remembering."  
  
She was quiet again as the sun continued its cycle of fusion, the fuel burning off the surface and traveling through the great void like feverish waves of radiation. It was hypnotic watching something so magnificent perform the cyclical, selfless act that would one day end its own life.  
  
"I was cleaning out some boxes last night." She hated silences. Anything to fill the void. "I found these old photos of this. guy. From Boston. It's been a long time since I thought about him." Why was she telling him this?  
  
Finally, Grissom turned his head, just slightly, but remained silent.  
  
Sara raised her chin off the chair to speak, and gave his response a little smile. "We never broke up, really. I don't even know if we were really going out. One day, I just . stopped calling." She recognized the veiled curiosity on Grissom's face, and continued, "I'm not very good at ending things. But seeing that picture again made me wish I had called, at least to just say . sorry. Or something. To make it official, or whatever. I just lost track of time, and I guess I didn't really care."  
  
"About closure?"  
  
"About him." Her response had come quickly, almost too much so, and she caught his stare with her own. Eventually she had to look away; she couldn't read the meaning in his eyes and the gaze was more intense than usual. Maybe she shouldn't have come up here.  
  
His eyes returned to the sky, where the sun had started to dip below the horizon. The glare made him squint, and he surveyed the silhouetted shapes around him that were tall enough to enter his line of sight from this height. Palm trees. An air vent on another rooftop. A rectangular hotel sign spinning in lazy circles. A flock of birds. The roughened outline of the distant, hazy mountains.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sara get to her feet. As she was about fold up the chair he spoke, barely audible. "My father died twenty-five years ago today." He didn't even look at her; it was almost as if he had made the remark it to himself.  
  
Sara froze for a moment, unsure of what to do, and then eased back onto the chair, positioning herself slightly closer to him this time. Her brain churned frantically. No auto-responses were logged for that sort of statement. All of her blank thoughts resulted in an awkward silence. She just stared at him as he gazed out at the slowly vanishing orange sphere 93,000,000 miles away.  
  
"I was never angry at him for leaving us. I just wanted a why." He absently rubbed his thumb over the back of his other hand.  
  
"Did you ever see him again?" She asked hesitantly, not sure if she even belonged in this conversation.  
  
Grissom sighed. "At his funeral."  
  
Sara winced.  
  
"My mother gave the eulogy. She signed and I spoke for her." His voice trailed off as he turned his head, following the flight path of a passing bird.  
  
Signed. She signed. Sara ran the words over in her mind as the realization hit her. So many formless clouds were suddenly swept from her memories as she looked back over to him.  
  
He abruptly laughed, making Sara jump slightly. "They still got buried next to each other, after all the fighting and complaining. They bought those plots the year after I was born." He looked down at the tarred rooftop, and then over to Sara, who was still just staring at him. "They bought one for me, too."  
  
Sara furrowed her brow. "That's kind of disturbing, isn't it? To know your whole life where you're going to be buried?"  
  
He shrugged. "It's kind of comforting, in a way. I can travel all over the place and I'll always know I'll end up back where I started."  
  
The air was silent again as he gazed back out at the top sliver of sun still clutching onto the remains of the day. Sara laid her head on her crossed arms, and watched how the colors played with the features on Grissom's face. How they softened and revealed. How the remaining light caught the very tips of his eyelashes as they gracefully floated up and then down in a slow, methodical blink. He licked his lips, the moisture desperately clinging to the soft skin before being wicked away by the desert air.  
  
"She died two years after him. Two years to the day."  
  
"I'm sorry," she responded, cringing at the clichéd sympathy reply, and was glad he had chosen to direct his eyes straight ahead rather than at her.  
  
He bit his lips as he debated whether or not to continue his line of thought. Now his teeth moved on to his tongue, chewing gently on the textured surface as his mouth contorted in various pensive ways.  
  
"I. found her . uh." he blinked rapidly and bit his lip again. "She was in the kitchen."  
  
Sara raised her head slightly, a whole host of emotions fueling her interest. Intrigue. Curiosity. Empathy. And there was something else that she couldn't identify; it gnawed relentlessly at her heart.  
  
"They wouldn't let me do the autopsy."  
  
Sara licked her lips and quietly asked, "She was murdered?"  
  
"No." He bit his lip again and winced, turning his head to the side. "Not exactly."  
  
Sara watched as he rubbed his palms together and again bit his tongue. With one finger he pretended to pick something out from under a nail.  
  
"I'm sorry," she finally said, full volume. "I shouldn't -"  
  
"My mother. umm." his voice wavered as he cut her off. ".Had insomnia. She'd wake up in the middle of the night in a panic because she couldn't tell where she was without the lights on. So she used to leave every light on in the house almost all the time." He inhaled deeply, and then let it out through his nose. "I think it bothered her as much as it did me."  
  
He briefly sat up straight to stretch his back, and then crossed his arms on the back of the chair. His eyes were still entranced by the sunset, where brushes of pink and violet whisked across the glowing yellow canvas.  
  
"She took pills," he finally spoke again after a long silence.  
  
Sara tore her eyes from the ant on the ground, and looked back at Grissom. "For the insomnia?"  
  
"I mean. she took pills." as the words stopped, he turned his head to look at her.  
  
At first she thought the intensity of the sun's glare had coated his eyes with a thin film of moisture, but a few more moments convinced her otherwise. Her mouth opened hesitantly, and then her hand found his shoulder. "Grissom, I'm so sorry." She could barely even hear herself.  
  
The blinks came more rapidly as he fought the tears, and he turned away, burying his face into his other shoulder. One hand came up to cover his eyes, and a sigh found its way out of his mouth. The pressure on his shoulder became a gentle squeeze, and Sara's warmth bled through the material down to his skin.  
  
As he pressed his eyes against the inside of his arm, he felt the weight leave his shoulder, where it soon resurfaced on the back of his head. The gesture comforted him more than he thought it would, and the shuddering in his chest calmed as he slowly released a lengthy sigh.  
  
Finally the sun sank below the horizon, and Grissom eventually lifted his head, his fingers firmly affixed to his eyes as they clotted the last remaining drops trickling from his tear ducts. He could still feel her gently stroking his hair, tenderly moving over his head like fingers reading raised dots of Braille.  
  
The sky gradually faded from gold into light pink, ushering in the dusk that quickly coated everything around them in a muted blue haze. The mountains in the distance turned from brown to violet, their jagged outlines becoming harder and harder to perceive.  
  
The air was suddenly cooler, and the breeze felt like ice as it swept into his tear-swollen eyes. He blinked to alleviate the discomfort, and then turned to Sara. "I'm sorry," he finally said, his voice straining.  
  
Sara cocked her head, confused. "For what?"  
  
"I don't normally ." he gestured blindly, and sighed at his loss of words.  
  
She smirked. "Nobody does this normally, Grissom." He lifted his eyes to meet hers, still feeling the warmth of her hand on his head. "It's called honesty."  
  
The whites of her eyes seemed to glow in the growing darkness, and her hand fell to the base of his neck, where she squeezed gently under the collar of his shirt. Her fingers gave his skin one last embrace before her arm came to rest on the back of her chair.  
  
He stared at her until she finally looked away, and then shifted his eyes to her arm propped on the chair's backrest. His eyes moved down her forearm, finally stopping at her hands. Her graceful fingers were only inches away.  
  
The sensation was startling, his skin warm and soft against hers. She gazed down to see his pinky finger lightly wrapped around her own. When she found his eyes, he smiled, and she gave him one in return.  
  
They watched as the last wisps of pink dissolved into blackness, and then continued to survey the void as it quickly became speckled with tiny, flickering, glowing orbs.  
  
After another moment, Sara finally stood, still holding Grissom's finger. Roused from his trance, he gazed over to her. "Where are you going?"  
  
Sara flashed a smile he'd never seen before. "I think I need to go make a phone call."  
  
He nodded, and then let go of her finger and watched as she slowly disappeared into the darkness.  
  
The chair creaked as he raised himself to his feet and briefly stretched his arms over his head. He took a long, deep inhale, quickly wiped his eyes, and then walked away.  
  
(fin.) 


End file.
